


ab initio

by smithens



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Barricade Day, Barricade Day 2017, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canonical Character Death, Child Abandonment, Childbirth, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, Paris Uprising 1832
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-10 18:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11132268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: The beginnings and ends of the principal members of the Society of the Friends of the ABC.





	1. enjolras | i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Please read the tags for content warnings.**
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> Belated work for Barricade Day, 2017. Will post on a regular basis until the work is finished, but didn't want to upload everything at once. Most of these are 200-350 words.

In the late hours of Saint Stephen's Day a child is born.

He is small, a frail thing with thin, white limbs, and only the beginnings of wispy golden hair.

The midwife attends to his mother; the novice attends to him. Eight horrible seconds of silence pass, and then he is cut from his mother. He begins to wail, his legs and arms kick, and soon he is breathing, with rosy skin.

The mother weeps without sound, curls against herself and reaches out her arms, sweat beading upon her brow.

The baby is early, but alive - after two stillbirths it is no feat short of a miracle.

The midwife allows her to hold her son, and she clutches him to her clothed breast even as he cries without pause but to breathe. Her husband opens the chamber door with a slam -  _ Monsieur Enjolras! _ cry the midwives, but he ignores them both, and leaves the door open.

In moments he is clutching his wife's hand, stoic, murmuring,  _ Aurélie, Aurélie, Aurélie _ . The midwife has neither the courage nor the audacity to request his leaving, even when he lays his head upon her shoulder and rests his hand below her abdomen and against the feet of the child.

She crosses herself and instructs the novice to prepare a swathe, retrieves her other apron and a cool wet cloth for the mother, looks away for just one moment -

All at once the father rises, blood upon his fingers, shouting for the doctor, the novice shrieks and drops the bundle of little blankets in her panic, and as the doctor enters and the mother stills the newborn's screams do not quiet.


	2. combeferre | i

The labor is slow, exhausting, painful, but she has never felt such joy as to bring children into the world.

The girl comes first, in the early hours of the morning, with curly dark hair and screams that soften only as she is brought to nurse. After the child is taken from her, the new mother lies back; the pain of delivery subsides.

 _Madame Combeferre_ , says the midwife as she presses a cool cloth to her brow, _do rest, now, while you may_. The physician notes her pulse, examines her chest; as her daughter quiets, the woman finds sleep.

When she wakes her husband is by her side, love in his eyes, his gaze directed at nothing. She asks, _how is she_ , weariness in her voice, and her husband - the father of her daughter and soon another child - comes to himself and beams. She squeezes his hand.

Within three hours - after the first was cleaned and swathed and given to the nursemaid - the twin follows, with similar coloring and features, but his limbs a little thicker, his hair a little thinner. His screams are softer, too, than his sister's, even as he gasps for his first breaths outside of the womb. The boy is easier than his sister, too, to put forth; the mother breathes a prayer of thanks as the midwife swathes and cradles him.

He is placed in her arms, just as her daughter was, and she holds him close to her - it will be better, healthier, for him to nurse from another, but for now she can cradle him, and dream for him.

The little one opens his brown eyes for the first time just as the morning sun shines through the curtains of the bedchamber.


	3. prouvaire | i

She is bathing in private when she begins to feel pain in her back and legs. 

It is not until the attendant - a young, kindly woman, if one with whom Madame Prouvaire can only communicate through her own faulty Arabic and representative gestures - comes to bring more water that she realizes she has begun labor. Through a series of pained motions, she helps the servant to understand, and the woman quickly runs off. The warm water is soothing, but after the complications of her pregnancy she is anxious for the health of her child.

Soon enough her husband returns from the market, the physician in tow, and the maid guides her from the bath to the bed. Although she speaks no French, her voice is comforting, protective; it is more comfortable to be with her than the doctor.

In Cairo it is warm in February; she is comforted by that, too, even as her husband turns away from her — in Aix he would not have been present, this agreement was unspoken and yet known to all — and the aches and tension heighten. She focuses only upon the baby: her midwife had not told her that this could come so fast.

The birth happens quickly, although the pain is unbearable.

Moments pass. She weeps, and her husband grasps her hand. The attendant says something which could be a prayer: she is not Catholic, of course, but her words will suffice as a blessing.

Her son quiets when he is placed into her arms, and she feels a swell of joy in her heart, worthy of a hymn. 


	4. feuilly | i

The birth was brief and bloody.

The mother feels she can hardly stand, but she has walked across the city, kept him swathed beneath her cloak. It is summer, but night time.

 _Perhaps_ , she thinks, _a beautiful yet barren young woman with a moneyed, noble husband will retrieve him, and raise him like a prince._

_Perhaps an older couple, with money for allowances and law school in Paris and holidays to Austria, will take him home tonight; perhaps they will have always wanted a son._

_Perhaps a woman of her hometown will find him familiar, and take him in, and he will grow up a diligent peasant boy, hearty and happy._

_Perhaps the Church will raise him, and he will join the monastery, devoted and educated, well-fed and comfortably housed._

_Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps._

Her lover, departed, would not have allowed this betrayal of her own blood. She grieves: if he were here, they could raise a child. He is not; she won't.

The mother does not want a life like her own for her baby: a three-woman garret room with night visitors is no place for a little one.

She holds the newborn in her arms, swathed tightly; her legs and hips and belly still ache from labor and delivery. The alley is lit only by a sliver of moonlight, hidden by clouds and rooftops.

He sleeps soundly.

She lays him at the doorstep.

He screamed very little when she brought him forth, nursed well. He has been quiet, since. She likes his eyes: big and brown; and she likes his hair, soft and fair and wispy. The mother would like to see his eyes again: but if he wakes, he will know what she has done. But, she supposes he wouldn't cry.  _Wouldn't a couple adore a quiet newborn?_ She knows what goes on at the foundling, but she tells herself: _perhaps, perhaps, perhaps_.

Perhaps she herself will be taken in —  perhaps she will become a nursemaid, leave the magnanerie, earn her fortune.

She has heard it said that a mother always knows her children. Perhaps she will see him again someday. 

And perhaps she won't.


End file.
